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TRANSPERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF "ACTING FIELD"

By Gayl Welch

The following is a compilation from an interview with Martin Muller, which is part of the research data for a Ph.D. Dissertation on Acting Field.

His statements are in response to the following query:

There are three common ways to connect with the transpersonal. I am looking for others. The three common ways are:

(a) To think about, believe in; philosophize about that which is beyond.

(b) To look at, observe, relate as an 'other'. This is common in mystical experiences and meditation. There is a striving to become more united with that which is beyond.

(c) To be in, to be absorbed by, to go along with, to be carried in without a sense of determining the direction of the action. To have no separation from that which is beyond. It may no longer feel as beyond. A 'wu wei"; a doing‑not doing. It is a doing because of participation and a not‑doing in the sense of in some way directing or creating the action.

Do you connect in any ways different from these? Do you use this in any way to affect your personality? Do you use it in any way in your work with others?

Gayl Welch

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TRANSPERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF "ACTING FIELD"

WHOLENESS

The approach to wholeness is usually linear. So people speak of a lower self and a higher self(the one behind). We have to reach the higher personality. We have to be the higher personality. What is missed in this proposition is that the awareness of the so‑called "higher personality" is much more whole than the awareness of the personality with the small "I". These are not two different wholes. The small "I" covers ground that is within the awareness of the higher "I". The higher aspect sees as a whole; the personality is included. That means everything including the function of the personality will be experienced and expressed differently‑‑according to the greater whole.

In the experience when you are the whole, there are ways of acting in which there is no ego. But then the level implied is not subjected to time and space. For usual consciousness, this is idle talk. I mean, you cannot participate in that untrained. It is not possible. I'm afraid that, for instance on the psychological level, you deal always with a sort of separated identity. Beyond identity there is something but it is, let us say, a still greater whole. It is not a fading of identity.

COMEDIAN AND MASK: DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness belongs to your personality. Consciousness is centered around the acceptance of the sense of "I". It's a typical function of the persona (mask). Now, when you start finding who is behind the mask, the proposition is different. When you are yourself again, (the real one‑‑the Comedian behind his mask), you don't speak the same way. In the image of comedian and mask, consciousness as it is known, is a mask function.

In using words, I have to make a difference between consciousness which applies to what is known on personality level, and another type of consciousness. But if 1 say "consciousness", it is confusing. So I say awareness. The awareness that deals with the whole is not the sequential awareness of the mind. The mind, being obviously part of the whole, can be trained to function as part of the whole instead of being only part of the persona. But that means retraining the mind. That retraining can only be done from the one behind‑‑not by the mind itself. On the level of the mind itself, if you have an incomplete functioning, whatever this functioning proposes will be according to itself‑‑incomplete.

TAKING THE POSITION OF COMEDIAN

If you are identified with the personality, and you look into the unknown field of what stands behind, you look at it according to data from personality level. When you explore what is behind, you have to be that. As language goes, you say your real self is behind the mask. You do not explore Self. You are Self. That means the proposition of exploring behind the mask involves you being the one behind and you have to take that position.

When the comedian deals with another comedian, there is no more duality in the relation of the mask(that means the personality) and the real self(whatever that is). That means you have one continuum of action that involves comedian and the mask in one action. Ideally speaking, this is what is supposed to be on the scene in mankind. The comedian plays in the theatre and there is only one action. There is no duality of the personality and something hidden behind.

You cannot be anything in the whole without assuming responsibility. You are a responsible actor. The actor is creative. That is to say simply, that he is a creator. The mask is only as mask. Anybody can use that mask. In a troop of actors, masks can be interchanged; actors cannot be. Something else can be lived through a mask. Depending on what is needed in a given character, you'd assign that role to a certain actor rather than another one because one is more gifted in that kind of shading than the other.

FIELD IS A FUNCTION OF THE ONE BEHIND

In one way of looking, there is only one universal field. But then, within that whole field, you can originate a specific action. Now, you can look at the specific actions as polarized minor fields within the whole. Then you have the aspect of several fields. But the several fields stem from the whole and are dealt with as expressions of that whole. The field is a function of the one behind.

When I speak of the one behind the mask, I am speaking of something other than field which is still directly related to the field. You can look at field simply as field; you can look at field as presence. It makes a difference.